Time Warp as a Weapon in Red Giant Short 'Tempo,' Plus a Super Secret Sale (Soon)

No one's doubting the impact that time-play can have in motion pictures. This, you'd think, would generally refer to things like time-lapse or slow-motion -- but what if some scientific breakthrough could invoke slow-motion upon real life objects, like some kind of time-warp weapon? Post-plugin powerhouse Red Giant has just released an original sci-fi/action short called Tempo that explores this possibility, and then some. It's exciting whenever a hard-concept type of film sets its premise, proceeds to meet each and every hopeful expectation you might have given that premise, and then goes even further than you could hope for. This is the case with Tempo -- check it out below. (Also, a Secret Sale soon-to-be... Shh, secret!)

I should offer a warning that there's some intense time-bending action going on here, as well as mild violence -- it's nothing you haven't seen in a PG-13 rated film, though, violence-wise. Here is Tempo, directed by Seth Worley with co-produced and co-written by key Red Gianter Aharon Rabinowitz.

Though there's not any behind-the-scenes material for Tempo yet available from Red Giant, we wanted to share it sooner rather than later -- you know, for the sake of timeliness (hey-ho!). We've previously covered another Seth Worley-directed Red Giant short Plot Device, which bears a similar duality to Tempo -- they're shorts and proof-of-plugin commercials at the same time. Creative content in exchange for being exposed to what some strong software plugins can do is fine by me.

The timing of this short (just can't stop myself) is no coincidence either -- even though Red Giant's homepage asks to keep it hush-hush -- they are allowing mailing list sign-ups to be clued into an upcoming 'Secret Sale' they'll be having. The tie-in is, of course, that the sale (as of yet undisclosed) will put the power to create every Red Giant-born thing you see in Tempo, and beyond, at what they're simply now calling a "BIG discount." If this type of plugin and effects work interests you (and if spending a lot less money than usual on the exact same product also interests you), stay tuned and sign-up at Red Giant.

Did you guys enjoy the short? How about the effects work -- obviously very important to achieving the film's goal, did the execution impress you? Will you be jumping on the Magic Bullet train when this discount drops?

I think they purposely made the acting dodgy to emphasize the indie nature of the film. Basically selling the idea that no budget amateur indie film makers can do all these special effects with red giant software.

Bad actors or good actors that are good at bad acting required now for short film showcasing a software house's VFX plug-ins aimed at the indie film market. Actors must be stilted, hammy and 'not in the moment' as this is the only standard of actors that our customers can find.

I seriously doubt that they would purposefully use 'bad actors' so that if fits in with their market. I also think that it's patronising to say that only the indie film market can get 'bad actors'. I also think that the acting was patchy but that there were a couple of nice moments from them, especially since they were probably secondary to the VFX in terms of what was most important on the shoot. The makers have also probably played a lot of half life.

Cool idea and quite well done.
Now the bad things:
- (minor thing) the recoil when the guys fired their guns looked ridiculous
- the stabilization in post looked awful too often
- way too violent for my liking
- sometimes in some fx shots I couldn`t tell if it was artefacts or intentional (when he was between the cars and the red car blurred strangely)

Just a note, frag grenades do not explode into a flaming ball, they explode into many tiny fragments. There is very little explosives involved. When it blows up, it looks very lame, as opposed to what they show us in movies.

Suffers a bit from being a sequel to the truly brilliant Plot Device. But still worth watching.

This sale had better be 70% or more off with all this hype. 20% off will be a disappointment. If the sale is marketed with more intensity than the product, everyone who misses the sale will sit on their hands till the next one.

Well I loved the short overall, entertaining story good direction and editing, my critique goes to the visuals, bad cinematography with poor lighting choices and framing. VFX was bad as well, screams cheap,enough to tell the story though, I know the point of this was to sell their products for vfx, color, etc, however I would never buy anything to look like that. Anyway I still going to watch it again :)

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